The gates to Dead End swing open, and the pick-up rolls inside, squishing through slush on a windy dirt road to the garage, past the smattering of tress that obscures the view from the roadway. Rosita's eyes drink in the scene with an awe that just keeps growing. When they slide out of the truck, Dolly, Colton, and Father Nicolas go their separate ways, while Javier takes Rosita on a tour of the estate.
Dead End has a huge barn full of sheep, goats, and chickens that are staying warm for the winter, and another smaller barn with four horses and a cage full of bunnies.
"New litter," Javier explains. "We're raising them for meat. Not big enough to eat yet."
He shows her the greenhouse, which is three times the size of the one at Hillcrest, and actually has things growing in it – more than just perpetual spinach. "How – "
"- Solar heaters," he says. "Carson rigged them up on a timer."
They pass a smokehouse that is twice the size of the one at Dead End, an ice house that is about the same size, and then a solar bay. "How much power do you generate?" she asks.
"Enough to recharge thirty portable battery packs each week."
"And how many battery packs do you have?"
"Forty," he answers.
"Then why did you ever want to trade us for one?"
"We have more than forty people," he answers. "And you needed fresh food."
The fields are vast, carefully fenced-in, and well irrigated. There's a small orchard of dwarf fruit trees – mostly apple, but also pear, peach, and plum. They pass a well. In the distance, she can see a gristmill on the edge of the stream that lines the border of the forest, its large water wheel not turning at the moment, probably because of ice or slush. "You make your own flour?"
"We just started to this past fall. And cornmeal."
They near a small guest house, a quaint stone cottage with tempeled roof and smoke pumping from the chimnery. It looks like something out of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Javier knocks on the door and introduces her to the old lady who answers: "This is Juanita. She's the one who gave us the rings."
Juanita makes them sit down to tea in a living room cluttered with children's toys. The cottage has a small kitchen, a breakfast nook, and what looks to be three bedrooms, though one door is closed. "Juanita lives here with her daughter and son-in-law," Javier explains to Rosita, "who have both worked at Dead End loyally for twenty years now. They're probably working now. They have four children, ages two to ten. Dolly delivered them all." He turns to Juanita and asks loudly, "Where are the children?"
Juanita cups a hand around her left ear, and he repeats his question, in Spanish this time.
"Naps," she answers in Spanish, pointing to the closed bedroom door. "It's nap time." Juanita pats Rosita's hand and leans close to her. She tells her, in Spanish, "You take good care of him. He's a keeper that one."
Rosita smiles. "I think maybe he is."
It's a while before they can extract themselves from Juanita's tea time and continue the tour.
[*]
Two red and blue coolers containing mutton, bacon, butter, eggs, and cheese now line the wall of the kitchen. Daryl pulls a canister out of one of the three large cardboard boxes of food Dead End brought them. "Cows? Cows?" he asks. "18 servings."
"What?" Carol poises her pen over the inventory book. "Spell it."
"C-o-u-s-c -"
She laughs, he turns an angry red, and she swallows the laugh. "It's couscous. Put it with the grains."
"Hell's coo coos? Some pretentious shit only rich people eat?"
"I assure you plenty of poor people throughout the world eat it. It's good. You'll like it."
"'Course I'll like it. You'll be the one cookin' it."
Carol smiles at the gruff compliment.
He pulls out a canister. "Grits. Now we're talking." He looks at the label. "32 servings."
He pulls out a mason jar. "Dead End's pickled onions. Looks like six servings."
"Does it seem strange to you that Mason's not on the Council at Dead End?" Carol asks.
"Nope."
"I knew he wasn't the leader," Carol muses, "but I thought he was in line to be, when Amos died."
"Mason's like me. He either follows, or he does his own damn thing. Ain't a leader."
"You're a leader, Daryl," she insists.
He puts the jar of pickled onions on the vegetable shelf and pulls out another jar. "Three bean salad. Dead End's homemade. Six servings maybe."
"You don't think you're a leader?" she asks. "You're on the Council."
"Not at the Hilltop. Wasn't 'til we got here."
"You were way back at the prison, though," she reminds him. "And you led all those people from the sewers of Alexandria to the Hilltop."
He shrugs. "Not sayin' I can't lead when I have to. Or I don't got ideas. Just…I ain't ever wanted the kind of responsibility Rick took on his shoulders. The kind Ezekiel took on in the Kingdom. King Maggie did at Hilltop. Kind Amos is doin' at Dead End. You always wanted me in charge," he says. "All the way back to when Hershel's farm burned down."
She'd told him then that she wanted a man of honor in charge, looking at him pointedly, and he'd told her Rick had honor. "Do you feel like I push you too hard?" she asks.
"Nah. 'S not that. 'Preciate your confidence in me, Carol, I do. But I ain't that man. Ain't never been. I got my role. It means somethin'."
"You've done a lot for the group," she agrees.
" 'S enough for me. 'S enough for Mason, too."
"Maybe you understand him better than I do."
He pulls out four cans of tuna. "Tuna. Expired six months." He rolls his eyes up as he calculates. "9.6 servings." He takes a glass milk bottle out of the box next, except it's got something murky purple-black in it. "Grape juice I reckon. Dead End's personal label. One pint."
"That leaves a question," she says.
"Well, sip it 'fore you give it to the kids, though. 'N case it's wine."
"No, I mean, a question about Dead End's leadership. When Amos dies…if Mason doesn't take over…who will?"
"One of his kids, probably."
"Someone favorable to us?"
He looks up from the juice like he's just realized what she's implying.
"Dolly seems to like us well enough," Carol muses. "She didn't ask for anything for her midwifing services."
"Can't believe they'd give it to that Colton kid," Daryl says.
"I certainly hope not. He doesn't seem capable. What did you think of Henrietta?"
"Dunno…didn't get a read on 'er. She didn't say much."
"And Garret wasn't there at all," Carol says. "But he's the oldest son after Mason."
"So let's hope he ain't an asshole like his pa."
"I'm beginning to think maybe Amos isn't as big of an asshole as I imagined," Carol admits. "He's only lost a handful of his people in a single uprising. He's protected his own for three years now, and with far less killing than we've ever done." She sighs and turns a page in her inventory. "But maybe that will change. Maybe we can be settled here, too."
[*]
Not far from the first guest house, there's a second of similar size. Javier walks Rosita up the path. "Garret Weatherford never left the vineyard. He's a winemaker and an excellent handy man. Not bad at fishing, either. He's lived in this house since he got married in his early twenties. He has three daughters now. The oldest is twenty-one and the youngest is seventeen." He pauses in front of the door. "Remember that walker Daryl found in the woods? Cooper?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Garret married Cooper's wife."
"He married his own sister-in-law?"
Javier shrugs. "Why not? In the Bible they were commanded to. Protection for the widows. So she's living here too, of course, along with her son from her first marriage. The cousins are stepsiblings now." He knocks on the door.
A pretty, thirty-something brunette answers. She has big hair and a stupid mile. From within the cottage, a piano suddenly stops playing.
"Candy," Javier says, "I want you to meet my new wife, Rosita."
Candy invites them inside. There's a young boy, maybe four or five, playing by the fireplace, rolling a firetruck up and down the brick surface and raising the ladder to pretend to put the fire out. "That's Cooper and Candy's boy," Javier whispers. "Jackson."
The man at the piano stands and turns.
"Garret," Javier says, "this is my wife Rosita."
Garret comes and shakes Rosita's hand, but doesn't saying anything more than, "Garret Weatherford." He looks about ten years younger than Mason, and ten years older than Candy. His hair is a dirty blonde, and his eyes are a light hazel rather than Mason's solid blue.
"I'll make us some tea," Candy says. "On my hot pot. Hot hot hot! Right, Garret, baby?"
Garret looks almost pained by her excitement.
"We've already had tea, thank you," Javier says. "I just wanted to make the introductions."
"Well, you have to sit a while," she insists. "Girls!" she shouts. "Oh girls! Come on out here and meet Javier's new chaquita!"
Javier rolls his eyes sympathetically to Rosita.
"Have a seat," Candy insists, gesturing to the couch, and they do. Garret sighs and sits down heavily in a leather recliner.
Two older teenage girls emerge from a bedroom. "Where's Carolyn?" Candy asks.
"At the big house," one of the girls answers.
"Well, these are Garret's youngest girls," Candy says, "Elizabeth and Anna."
"Carson's dating Elizabeth," Javier whispers to Rosita.
Elizabeth is a thin, rather flat-chested brunet with hazel eyes like Garret's. Her younger sister looks very similar, but with lighter hair.
"Nice to meet you, Rosita," Elizabeth says. She turns to her father. "Can I go back to reading now?"
Garrett waves his hand and both girls quickly disappear back to the bedroom.
Candy sits down next to Rosita on the couch and proceeds to talk quickly about a long series of mundane things one after another – mostly gossip about people Rosita doesn't know - until Rosita's eyes gloss over.
Garret, without a word, stands from his recliner and returns to the piano bench, where he begins playing.
"Garret's such a good piano player," Candy tells Rosita loudly over his playing. "The older ones all learned from their mother."
"Well, we really need to get going," Javier tells her, standing and tugging Rosita up.
When they escape the house, Rosita issues a sigh of relief. "Odd couple."
"She talks a lot," Javier agrees.
"And Garret doesn't talk at all."
"She's a moron," Javier tells her. "But women are scarce, and I bet the sex is good. A man's willing to put up with a lot for that."
"Is that so?" Rosita asks with a raise of her eyebrow.
"Not me. My standards in women are very, very high."
She chuckles.
[*]
Michonne presses the photo she took of Javier and Rostia's wedding – she snapped it just as Javier was kissing the bride - onto a page of the Our Family album, underneath the snapshot of all the Hillcresters on the porch. She looks up when Rick sits down on the library couch next to her.
"I better be getting a picture of you with the baby." He stretches an arm across the couch behind her and settles his hand on her shoulder. "I don't want you taking all the photos and not being in any of them."
Michonne leans her head on his shoulder. "Well, there are still sixteen shots left. I'm going to wait until the baby's born to use anymore."
"Did you and Dolly work out your birth plan before she left?"
Michonne nods. "She was very accommodating."
"She and Tara seemed to make friends. Do you think -
"That Dolly's gay?" Michonne interrupts. "I don't know. Elijah says Carson says she's never been married."
"Who knows," Rick says with a laugh. "Maybe there really is someone for everyone."
"I wish," comes a voice from the foyer. They both look up to see Jerry near the entryway to the library.
"Well maybe someday," Michonne suggests.
"Maybe if we Jesus and Aaron find Oceanside, and they come live here…" Jerry grins.
"Jesus and Aaron are going to look for Oceanside?" Rick asks.
"When the slush is gone and it's warmer. In late March, maybe. I volunteered to go with them." Jerry walks on.
"I think he's had a crush on Cynde for awhile," Michonne says.
"She's way out of his league," Rick replies.
"And two hundred miles away near Norfolk," Michonne says. "If our guess about Crotatan Beach is right. And if she's still alive."
